You Knock Me Out, I Fall Apart
by SomewhereApart
Summary: He's been a father before but never quite like this. After Regina heads out to rescue Zelena, Robin is left to deal with being a sudden new parent in the Land Without Magic. (Title taken from "Dear Theodosia," the patron song of new daddies.)


They try to tell him he has to leave her there. In that sterile place, in a plastic bed, overnight. That it's "routine." But nothing about this bloody situation is routine, and he'll be damned if he lets this child - his child, his _daughter_ \- out of his grasp for a moment, much less the whole night. Not now with the Dark One on the loose, and that _witch_ kidnapped, and Regina out attempting once more to save the day.

He is insistent, nearly belligerently so, that he will bring her home tonight, and eventually the hospital staff agrees, once he's signed his name to a Certificate of Live Birth. They want a name, there must be a name, they say, but he thought there was half a year yet to think on such things, so he has none prepared, and anyway, how can he name her before he even knows her? So she is Baby Girl Locksley (standard practice in this land, he's told - dropping the "of" and adopting one's homeland as surname), and he is officially a father.

They give him a bag full of samples - diapers and food and the like, and then there are more forms to be signed, and then he's ready to go.

Nearly.

She must have a car seat, they say. They will not let him leave without a car seat, and it's bloody ridiculous because he does not even have a car, but she _must leave in a car carrier_. She's light, only seven pounds they tell him, but he's had her in his arm for what feels like sodding eternity by now, dealing with bureaucratic nonsense, and his bicep is starting to ache. And he has to procure a _car seat_ before this bloody prison will let him take his own _child_ home.

Not for the first time, he thinks this Land Without Magic is a Land Without Any Damn Sense.

He's tempted to just walk out, but it seems after all the newborns at risk with this populace over the years, they're quite vigilant about the exit of fresh children, and so he bites the bullet and calls someone he hopes can lend him a hand.

With rescue on the way, he seats himself in a stiff plastic chair, the bag of samples at his feet and seven pounds of wriggling girl held carefully in his grasp. He cannot take his eyes off her, off her every little feature. Her soft round cheeks, and the pale wisps of her brows, little pink lips, and oh, she squirms and grimaces and dimples peek out at him. He grins, flashing his own for those dark blue eyes staring back up at him. Her tiny fingers fist and spread, and oh, she is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Unexpected, and half-dreaded, but glorious, and his.

Suddenly that bureaucratic nonsense seems less important. It all fades away, the hospital dissolving into a low wash of sound like waves on the shore. He's not sure how long they sit there, just Robin and his daughter, lost in each other (she has Roland's ears, he thinks, when her little cap slips up on one side, and he's struck by the fact that he has _children,_ that this tiny being is Roland's _sister_ ), but it must be a while, because Belle is beside him suddenly, car seat in hand.

It's Neal's – her occasional babysitting duties have left her with a spare key, and with Neal safely in the care of Granny, he doesn't need it at the moment. And thank goodness, because it means he can finally leave this godforsaken place and bring his _child_ home. Or, to Regina's home, anyway. Somewhere not here.

"Robin, she's beautiful," Belle tells him softly, her lips curving in the automatic smile of those graced with the presence of a cherubic newborn.

"Thank you," he murmurs in response, shifting his hold to give her a better view. Belle reaches out and draws her fingers gently across the softness of the baby's hand, and her fingers spread again, curling around the digit Belle immediately tucks inside. She has long fingers, he thinks. Maybe she'll be tall. He's not, not terribly so, but his mother was. A slim, willowy woman she'd been, and he wonders if this girl will take after her.

"She looks like you," Belle coos, her thumb stroking those long fingers. Does she? He looks harder at her, tries to see himself in the shape of her nose or the curve of her chin. He can't be sure, it's so hard to tell when they're this small. Belle's voice is tentative, it's sugar sweetness dulled to something a bit more… wary, when she asks, "Are you alright? This must be quite a shock."

His laugh is brittle, a bit broken, and he looks up into her face, this face of a friend he hasn't spent near enough time with now that they're back in this land. How in this or any other world can he answer that?

"To say the least," he manages, shaking his head, gaze drawn back to his daughter's face like a magnet. "I thought we'd have more time. To prepare. Although I'm not sure one can ever properly prepare to welcome your lover's sister's child into the world. But here she is. And I…" Emotion chokes him, joy and regret and guilt, but joy most of all. "She's so beautiful," he finishes.

Belle lets out a little laugh, a soft thing, and quiet, her thumb still tracing soft circles on silky skin. "Very."

"Do you want to hold her?"

The words leave his mouth before he thinks them through, the first time he's offered to let someone else carry her since the moment his daughter was placed in his arms, and he wishes he could bite them back, swallow them down, hold her safe forever. But Belle lights up at the offer, disentangles her finger from his little girl's grasp and reaches out for her. And it's Belle, he can trust Belle, and he'll be right here.

So he lets her go. For the first time in her new life, he lets his daughter go, hands her over to Belle in a careful exchange and watches as the other woman settles her gently into the crook of her elbow, bouncing the baby gently when she lets out a quick little fuss. She quiets almost immediately, and then Belle is murmuring the usual gushing praise with which one baptizes a child. _Aren't you precious_ , and O _h, yes, what a sweet girl_ , and a few other things Robin doesn't bother to listen to as he stretches out his arms, gives his bicep a good squeeze to ease the twinge in it.

They should go, he thinks, but he minds this place slightly less when he's not alone in it, and he doesn't want to take her back just as soon as he's handed her over, so instead he peers down into the bag the hospital had given him, pulling things out and putting them back one by one. There's packs of powder - baby formula, apparently. Enfamil and Similac. _What's the difference?_ he wonders. And nappies. Papery things with velcro closures, not the soft cotton cloths he used to diaper Roland when he was a babe. A blue nippley looking thing still in the packaging that he has to read to discover is a pacifier. It's different from the kind he knows baby Neal has. A plastic pack of baby wipes (what's wrong with a damp cloth?).

Robin tosses them back into the bag and scrubs his hand over his face, longing fiercely for the simplicity of their own land, where warm blankets, clean cotton, and a soft breast were enough to get a child through the night. It's all so bloody complicated here, and for a moment, a traitorous moment that lances guilt through him all over again, he wishes Marian were here. She'd been a natural with Roland, a born mother, and he thinks even in this strange land she'd know what to do.

But she's not the only woman he knows who's a born mother, and Regina will be back soon, will come home once she's rescued his daughter's… _mother_ , and then he'll ask her what exactly is the need for all this… stuff. The need for Marian fades away, replaced by a deep ache for Regina, and he's bitter for just a moment that it's Belle sitting beside him now instead. Angry all over again at Zelena for having the audacity to be kidnapped, for causing Regina to have to run off and clean another of her messes.

A dark and selfish part of him hopes she's too late, but then if it's Zelena needed to strike light magic from the world, well… He wouldn't give that up, wouldn't carve out part of Regina just to see Zelena gone, so he banishes that thought, too.

Elbows settle on knees, and he looks at his hands and scowls, feeling utterly lost once more.

"How'd Regina take it?" Belle asks, breaking the silence with a rather unwelcome question.

Robin glances over to her, and bobs his brows noncommittally. "As well as could be expected. She didn't have much time before Emma showed up and absconded with her sister. She's trying to be happy, for me, but I know it hurts her. I feel awful," he admits. "And at the same time… elated. About which, I feel awful."

"It'll all work out," Belle tells him, with a confidence he doesn't share. They're empty words anyway, the things one says when there's nothing good you can possibly assure. "You know, Mary Margaret and I, we used to place bets," she continues, rocking the baby gently back and forth. "During the Missing Year, we used to wager on when the two of you would finally admit your feelings for one another."

Robin's brows rise, a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "Did you, then?"

"Oh, yes," she coos down at his daughter, but the words are for him. "Snow was sure it was going to happen, sooner or later. I would always bet on later, but she had more faith." She glances back up at him, grinning. "Which means I won the bet, more than once. But I remember, the way you used to look at each other, when you thought no one was looking. She already loved you then, Snow was certain of it. And she still loves you now. And if you could make it through everything you've had to overcome to get to where you are now, you'll get through this."

That, he thinks, is less empty. His heart eases a bit, some of the ache loosening, and he smiles at her again and murmurs his thanks.

"I hope so," he tells her. "I'm not sure what I'd do without her. Survive, no doubt, but it would be… bleak." His mind turns to those weeks in New York, to the numbness of them, and the strain. There had been signs, of course, grand neon ones that should have clued him in to the truth of things, but he'd ignored them all. Told himself it was just the missing her that made everything feel so out of place. It hadn't been just that, of course. It had been deception and– he's not going to think about that now, not going to go down that path. But the missing her had been there under all of it. The hole in his heart that couldn't be filled during waking hours, his son his only real solace from the tug of her presence from 400 miles away.

"I don't think it'll come to that." Belle shifts the baby in her hold slightly, and then asks, "Where is this little princess going to be spending her first night in the big, wide world?"

"Regina's," Robin answers. They'd agreed on that much before she left. She'd insisted the forest was no place for a newborn, especially not with things the way they've been lately. They'd stay at her place, as he and Roland had been ever since they came back from New York. They'd never talked about it, he'd simply never left. He'd thought she might want him to, now, but whether for the baby or for himself, her home is still open to them, and for that he's grateful.

"Well, then," Belle says, matter-of-factly. "Let's get you home, little one."

Home, he thinks, with a shallow smile. He hopes so. He hopes, desperately, that the big, white house with its soft, warm beds and its apple pancakes and crispy bacon in the mornings can be home for them.

They get the baby unswaddled and clipped into the car seat, something she dislikes immensely, her soft snuffling sounds turning into fusses and then outright cries as they adjust the buckles and straps and then tuck her blanket around her squirming form to keep her from getting chilled as they carry her outside. Her cries cut at him, and he damns this ridiculous world once more, wondering for the hundredth time why he cannot simply carry his child home.

She doesn't settle, not the whole way to Regina's. It's a fifteen minute drive, and that only because they hit a red light on Main Street, but it's fifteen minutes of torture as far as Robin is concerned. He's out of Belle's car almost before it's even stopped at the curb, anxious to get the baby out of the car and into the house. Half the lights are on – Henry's home, and Roland, too, although Robin can see the guest room from the walk and its light is darkened. He sees the shadow of the older boy against the lighted curtains of his window before he unclips his precious screaming cargo from her car seat prison, cradling her close and shushing her as he bounces and rocks, bounces and rocks.

It does no good.

Belle rounds the car and hands him the diaper bag he'd forgotten in his haste, wishing him good luck and giving the baby's downy head a gentle stroke.

"She's lost her hat," he realizes, voicing his thoughts dumbly, and Belle bends to search it out in the car, comes back a moment later with tiny cap in hand. He grasps it between two fingers, holding it against her head uselessly, then turns and heads up the walk.

Henry's there waiting at the door when he turns, and he's never been more grateful to see the boy, even if the first question out of his mouth is a concerned, "Where's my mom?"

Robin catches him up, and makes introductions, all over the painful wailing of the red-faced infant in his grasp.

Henry doesn't seem to mind the crying, just shakes the little girl's hand with two fingers of his own, and says, "Hey, kid. Welcome to the family." The words are for her, but they ease something in Robin, a trepidation he hadn't even had time to feel beneath the surface of everything else that's been going on. She's here now, part of the family now, and he along with her. For better or worse.

He learns the ways of disposable nappies from a thirteen year old boy, and feels useless, because he's diapered a child before, but not like this, not in this land. Henry has had practice on his uncle (how strange, this family, all pieced together in the wrong order), and so he tells Robin when he leaves the fastening too loose, lifts the velcro back and tugs it snug. Right. Don't want them falling off or leaking.

When the dry bottom isn't enough to quell her squalling, they try for a meal instead, and he doesn't even attempt to do that himself. He's had more than one mishap with the microwave during his stay here, and Henry knows the sodding box like the back of his hand, so he lets him heat the water that they mix with foul-smelling powder and shake into something resembling milk.

That does it. The baby takes the bottle with gusto, sucking furiously at the wide, clear nipple, her little mouth working tirelessly to draw in sustenance.

Henry smiles and pats her head lightly (her hat is lost somewhere on the kitchen counter now). "Yeah, I get cranky when I'm hungry too, kid," he tells her, and Robin finds himself chuckling, and muttering, _Don't we all?_

"Don't forget to burp her," Henry says, and Robin knew that one, he remembers that much, but he doesn't say anything. Just nods and watches his daughter. Her hair is light. Sandy, he thinks, and he stares at it as he rocks her to and fro gently, guiltily searching for hints of red in the sparse locks as the light shifts over them.

When he glances up again, Henry is gone. He hadn't even heard him leave.

He wonders for a moment if he'd been rude, and then if he has cause to be, and then if the boy had just grown bored. Either way, he's thankful for the solitude, so he doesn't seek Henry out to make amends. The idea of silence and solitude is unbearably seductive, has him making his way quietly from the kitchen, up the stairs, his steps light as feathers, and slow, cautious. If he missed a stair now, it would be disastrous.

Henry's bedroom door is shut and he can hear the soft sound of voices and battle coming from beyond it. One of his computer games, surely. Robin feels less like he'd neglected the boy, then, and more like Henry had taken an excuse to return to his preferred entertainment. Good.

He pads quietly down the hallway, then nudges open the door to Regina's room. It looks exactly as it had when he'd last been in it, and it seems odd to him that it should, what with life so utterly changed from what it had been that morning. But it's all there, in perfect array. The bed made, if a bit rumpled (he hadn't been able to let her out of the room untouched this morning, not once he'd seen that maddeningly sexy zipper on her dress), all her things arranged just so.

He misses her then, and fiercely, as if it has been days since he's last seen her, and not mere hours (has it even been hours? What time is it?). She ought to be here with him, with them both. This baby ought to be hers, and the thought that she isn't has his heart twisting with sour mix of emotion, made even more acrid by the guilt that comes at that thought. He looks at this precious, perfect baby in his arms, glowing blue in the moonlight, a little dribble of milk shining at the corner of her mouth and feels guilt that he'd ever wish for any cell of her to be different, to be other than it is. She is perfection incarnate, but oh how he wishes she was Regina's and not… _hers_.

"You are perfect," he whispers to his daughter in the dark, carrying her closer to the window, gathering more light onto her skin. "You are precious, and perfect, and I love you with every cell in my body. You are perfect."

She's asleep, she hears nothing, but still he needs her to know. Needs to make up for his thoughts with promises that he loves her just as she is, no matter what he may wish in the dark corners of his heart. The bottle isn't quite empty, but her suckling has slowed to a crawl, and her fine lashes are silvery in the moonlight.

God, she's beautiful. What a beautiful child…

"Papa will never let anyone harm you," he murmurs gently. "Not anyone, not while I'm alive."

She sighs, her lips parting, a milky exhale wafting up from around the nipple. He draws the bottle back slowly, even more slowly when her lips twitch, her fingers, too. But she stays asleep, and so he sets the bottle down gently on the window ledge and carries the baby over toward the bed. She's not wrapped properly, the blanket bunched around her body but nothing resembling the tightly-wrapped burrito the hospital had made of her. He'd never been great at swaddling – Marian used to tease him so about it. Would tell him that if it were left to him Roland would be flapping about like a fish, all while she'd wrapped him up into a secure little bundle without even so much as looking, her eyes still smirking at Robin.

He tries to remember how she'd done it, easing the blanket from between the baby's arm and his body before spreading it out one-handed. He's gentle in all his movements, careful not to wake her as he settles her down and draws the fabric around her, tucking it in, wrapping her up. She's no burrito, but she's secure, at least, so he lifts her gingerly to his shoulder, supports her bottom with one arm while he pats at her back softly with his other hand.

She scrunches in her wrappings, but doesn't wake, and a minute later he hears a soft, hollow burp from her and smiles.

"Well, see, there we go," he murmurs. "Daddy can do some things right, now, can't he?"

And then there's nothing left to do but wait. She is home, safe and whole, and so are the boys. Regina is still out there, and he says a silent prayer that she's safe from danger, that she returns to him. Soon. The house feels empty without her here, like it's missing its center, its beating heart. It's warmer when it's filled with her voice, the click of her heels on the hardwoods, the smell of her coffee brewing in the pot.

He misses her, even though it's only been hours, and so he toes off his shoes and seeks her out as best he can, untucking their pillows one-handed and stretching out along the bed. He turns slowly onto his side and lets the baby settle onto the mattress beside him, her warm little body resting alongside his chest, his hand cupping protectively along her other side. The bed smells like Regina, like cinnamon and faded perfume and lavender laundry soap. Comforting, familiar. Home.

For a long time, he lies there and just breathes. Just breathes and watches his daughter do the same. Watches every little flicker on her face, every twitch, every sigh. He traces the silvery edge of her hairline, the whorls of her ear, the contour of her chin. His child, his _daughter_ , who could have imagined…

It's late when Regina returns. Very late.

He doesn't hear the front door open, or the click of her heels as she climbs the stair. Doesn't hear anything until the click of the bedroom door as it opens, at which he snaps into alertness, only then realizing he'd dozed off. The baby is still blessedly asleep.

At first, he's not sure what's woken him, but then he feels it. The presence of another in the room, and he turns his head to look at her, silhouetted in the hall light. She sighs, and it sounds weary, battle-worn, her voice scratches slightly as she whispers, "Hi."

"Hello," he murmurs back, his own voice sleep-roughened. He swallows, clears his throat softly, and watches as she sets down the bag she's been carrying (the diaper bag, he realizes), then shrugs out of her coat.

"How is she?" Regina asks, keeping her voice low and soft.

As if on cue, the baby wakes, letting out a whining little fuss. Robin turns his attention to her, shushing her softly, rubbing his palm along her belly, but it's no good, she's awake now.

The bed dips behind him, and Regina leans in closer, peering across his body to the little one on the bed beside him. She smells like perfume, and sweat, and the air after a rainstorm. Magic, he's come to know.

"When did she eat?" she asks, and Robin shakes his head, lifting his hand rub to thumb and forefinger over tired eyes, fighting the dull disorientation of being woken mid-nap.

"I'm not sure. When we got home."

The baby's cries become more urgent, and Regina makes a noise in the back of her throat, a soft, soothing thing, before telling him softly, "I'll take her for a while. You were sleeping."

Her face is half shadow in the darkness, the inky fall of her hair blocking the light, but he can see enough of her, and what he sees is a wistful sort of sadness. Her lips are curved, but he can't be sure if it's a smile or a grimace, and he feels terrible all over again. She shouldn't have to do this, not for him. They agreed, but she shouldn't have to. She shouldn't have to mother this child in the middle of the night, not when he knows her very existence causes pain.

"I've got it," he assures gently, his hand reaching back to brush her hair from her face, drawing the thick strands behind her ear. They don't stay, tumbling forward again just as soon as he's let them go. "You shouldn't have to."

It's she who tucks her hair back now, and properly, shaking her head, and now she _is_ smiling, telling him, "I know I don't have to. But I…" She takes a breath, lets it out, her smile cracking around the edges. "I want to. Really."

Robin swallows, and the baby cries, and their boys are asleep just down the hall. One of them has to quieten her before she wakes the whole house. Regina waits, expectantly, her tongue slipping out to wet her lips, and he wonders what will happen if he says no. Would she be relieved, or hurt? This seems suddenly like a moment that matters, like a declaration of the state of things between them.

He nods, tells her, "Alright," because he will not deny her this child, not ever. He will not exclude her in her own home, would like nothing more than to forget there's any other woman who can lay claim to this baby, any other woman who'd lain claim to him.

Regina smiles, relief sagging her shoulders, and he knows he made the right choice. But as she reaches across him, he's struck with a memory – her body, and her voice, and her urgent concern, and the morph of all that into Zelena with a delighted cackle. What if it all went wrong? What if they hadn't stopped Emma? What if - What if -

His hand finds her wrist with an iron grasp, and she jolts and gasps, startled, dark eyes darting to his in confusion.

"Prove to me that it's you," he tells her, hoping desperately she won't be offended, but she must understand, mustn't she? The fear, and the worry, she must understand. "Before I let you take her, prove it to me."

Confusion melts into recognition and she smiles softly, leaning in and pressing her lips to his. Zelena does not know how she kisses, does not know how to kiss with love, with all the force of a hard-won soul, and so he knows the instant her lips land on his that this is Regina. His love, the other half of his soul. His own rises to her in answer, his lips gentle as he tips his chin up for another taste, and the baby falls suddenly silent. Well, nearly so. Her cries have ceased, but he can hear the soft insistence of her breathing and he turns his head to find the end of Regina's finger tucked between tiny pink lips.

"It won't hold her for long," she murmurs knowingly against his cheek, and Robin smiles. She has the touch of a mother, he's known it from the first, and it had been that which had ensnared him in her web. She reaches over, somehow manages to hoist the baby one-handed, with only a slight assist from Robin, and there's but a moment where her makeshift pacifier is taken away before his daughter is secure in her arms, being shushed and cooed at. At once, he feels less alone, less lost. She's here with him, this mother that he so adores, and they _will_ get through this together, just as they'd agreed.

Regina gives the baby that fingertip again, and shifts as though to stand, but Robin reaches out, covers her thigh with his hand.

"Do you want company?"

She tilts her head, smiles down at him. "You were sleeping. Go back to sleep."

"I'm up now," he reasons, giving in to the urge to stretch, his body drawing long and tense for a moment before relaxing into the mattress. "Besides, I'm fairly certain I can't rely on Henry to make all her bottles. Might as well learn now."

Regina laughs softly in the dark, her head tipping forward, and it's perhaps the most beautiful thing he's seen in all his years. This woman he so adores cradling his unexpected child, her smile stretched wide. His heart pulses and warms, fills even more with love, its capacity limitless, it seems.

And then the baby catches on to this terrible ruse, releases Regina's finger with a soft cry when it yields no milk, and there's no more time for admiration or worry or any of that.

He has a microwave to master.


End file.
